8 Million Angry Birds Games Were Downloaded on Christmas

The popularity of the Angry Birds Franchise was understandable when the original game debuted just over two years ago. It’s a simple game that offers a perfect, bite-sized progression for bus rides or toilet trips.
Now that the game has inspired a theme park attraction, a Star Wars tie-in, a feature-length movie, however, it’s beginning to seem as if Angry Birds wasn’t simply a trend in mobile gaming. In fact, it seems that the Angry Birds franchise is becoming more popular than ever.

This week, Rovio announced that over eight million copies of Angry Birds games were downloaded on Christmas day alone. As they point out in the handy infographic below, that’s nearly one game for every other new mobile device activated on Christmas. Throughout the week of Christmas 30 million Angry Birds games were downloaded.

It appears that Rovio is counting downloads of Bad Piggies, which is an Angry Birds spin-off. It’s also unclear whether downloads of Amazing Alex were counted, though that number wouldn’t make up much of the 30 million downloads.

Assuming Rovio makes at least a dollar for each download (through the app price or through advertising), it’s clear that mobile gaming has become serious business. Gaming companies such as Nintendo will soon have to come to grips with the new reality of gaming and offer their classic titles on mobile platforms other than their own.